Skyrim:Conjuration

Conjuration, one of the five schools of magic in Skyrim, is the school dedicated to summoning creatures or objects the caster desires. Increasing this skill reduces the magicka cost when casting Conjuration spells. Historical information about the School of Conjuration is provided in the lore article. The Conjuration skill tree has a total of 15 perks, requiring a total of 16 perk points to fill.

In-game Description: The School of Conjuration governs raising the dead or summoning creations from Oblivion. This skill makes it easier to cast these spells as well as Soul Trap and bindings.

Bound Weapon spells conjure an ethereal weapon to your hand. With a few perks that are available at even a low level, bound weapons become very powerful.

The Soul Trap spell, important to anyone who wishes to enchant items or recharge magic weapons. While filled soul gems can be bought, and weapons enchanted with Soul Trap can be found, this is a low-level spell and it is often easier to capture your own souls even if you do not otherwise use Conjuration magic much.

The base cost for spells is the amount of magicka that would be necessary to cast the spell at 0 skill without any perks. The magicka cost at 100 skill is 41% less than the base cost; the cost can also be reduced via enchanted apparel and by unlocking various perks. See Spell Cost for the full magicka cost equation.

Skill level indicates which skill perk needs to be unlocked to decrease the spell's magicka cost. "N/A" is used for special spells whose cost is not affected by any perks.

The "Where to Get" column only lists guaranteed locations for obtaining the spell tomes. Most spell tomes are also available in random loot; see Spell Tome Locations for details.

For higher-level spell tomes to become available for purchase, your skill in the school must be high enough. Also, master-level spell tomes can only be acquired once that school's ritual spell quest has been completed.

All spell tomes have a weight of 1.

Skill XP can be modified by scripts and by the game engine itself under various circumstances. The exact XP you receive may vary from the numbers listed here.

Magicka cost and skill XP are rounded down, both in game and on this page. Because of this, you may find that you cannot cast a spell even though it appears you have exactly enough magicka to do so.

A list of standard Conjuration spells can be found on the Spells page. The following individual effects are all considered to be part of the school of Conjuration (see the individual effect pages for full details on availability; the Magical Effects article also provides a summary):

It is possible to reduce or even completely eliminate the magicka cost of spells by stacking Fortify Conjuration enchanting effects, which is very helpful when leveling Conjuration. The Secret of ArcanaDB power does the same thing, but only for 30 seconds.

When summoning creatures, you don't have to be engaged in combat at the time of casting to gain experience in Conjuration, as long as you encounter a hostile enemy before the summons vanishes.

Repeatedly casting high-duration, low-magicka Conjuration spells (Bound Sword for example) while in a combat situation will also quickly increase your Conjuration skill (some spells such as Bound Sword can be equipped in both hands for quicker leveling). An effective method for doing so very quickly:

Find a place with enemies that also has a place where you can retreat to that is out of reach of melee attacks (places with caged enemies are a useful alternative, as does encountering a slaughterfish but staying on shore). Kill all but one melee fighter and proceed to cast your spells. Often the enemy will run away in an attempt to find a position to get closer to you. They may retreat far enough to allow you to use the wait function to instantly replenish the magicka bar.

Have a follower, conjured atronach, or thrall engage in combat, or cast a Fury or Frenzy spell and then repeatedly cast Bound Sword. This allows you to accomplish objectives while leveling, without the need for grinding.

After clearing out a dungeon or a fort, resurrect each dead NPC, and then hit them four times to turn them hostile. Do not kill them, simply reanimate the next NPC and the first will drop dead, and then repeat the process.

An even faster way to level, although one that exploits a bug, would be to find any sort of dead body and repeatedly cast Soul Trap on it with dual-cast; you can go from level 40 to 91 in less than 10 minutes. If you stand near the big magic well in the College of Winterhold, you will gain additional magicka regeneration. If this is combined with the Altmer's Highborn racial power, your magicka will regenerate extremely quickly.

Bound Bow's damage without Mystic Binding has the bow's damage between ebony and Daedric and arrow damage equivalent to a Daedric[verification needed], and with Mystic Binding the bow's damage is equivalent to a Daedric (Exquisite) and arrows equivalent to Daedric.

If you have the Soul Stealer perk and plan to use Bound Weapons much, souls can be removed from soul gems by dropping them, which can help avoid "wasting" the capacity of the bigger soul gems with smaller souls. This only works on soul gems that you filled yourself, not pre-filled gems purchased from vendors.

Bound weapons cannot be disarmed.

Unlike in previous games, there are no Bound Armor spells. They have been substituted with the Alteration line of flesh spells.

Guards will comment on your abilities if you're proficient in the school of Conjuration: "Hail, Summoner! Conjure me up a warm bed, would you?"

If you cast any of the damaging Cloak spells while you have a conjured creature active, the creature will be dismissed. The reverse is not true; if you conjure a creature while a Cloak is active, both spells remain in effect. If you have the Twin Souls perk and two thralls or summoned creatures, then both summons will be dismissed. With the Elemental Potency perk all Elemental summons (Fire, Frost, Shock) are not affected by this issue (Dremora Lord is affected even with the perk).

Decapitated NPCs cannot be reanimated no matter what spell you use.

Creatures and NPCs brought back from the dead with Novice, Apprentice, Adept, and Expert-level spells will disintegrate into a pile of ash upon death, banishment, or once the effect wears off. NPCs reanimated with the Master-level spell, Dead Thrall, will not disintegrate and can be reanimated indefinitely. The level cap of reanimated undead targets can be raised by 25% with the Restoration perk Necromage.

NPCs reanimated with Dead Thrall can be used as a pack mule. Store whatever you want them to carry on their corpse and then reanimate them. If you wish to access your items afterwards or add more for the thrall to carry, kill it or summon/reanimate something else (this will cause the thrall to die) then take your things from the corpse or add more. The NPC can be reanimated again afterwards. You can also use this method to re-equip your thrall with any extra equipment you may have, although some may not equip heavy armor, and they usually wait until entering a new area to update their equipment.

There is the potential, though, that certain circumstances will cause the thrall to stop following you, and if left in a cell that resets, your items may be lost.

Thralls will refuse to come out of Broken Oar Grotto for some reason, and dead thralls will resurrect after a certain amount of time.

Conjured Ash Guardians do not count as active summoned creatures, meaning that they will not conflict with other summoned creatures.

The Necromancy, Atromancy, Dark Souls and Elemental Potency perks have no effect on conjured Ash Spawn, Ash Guardians or Seekers.

Use the console command player.dispelallspells to remove all temporary effects.

If you can turn into a werewolf, it will remove the effect and thus stop the comments.

Alternately, going to jail can get rid of this effect, as it dispels any active effects on you that are time-based. Because the Thrall effect is on your character for a certain amount of hours (that never count down), it is dispelled when sent to jail.

Summoning staves (e.g. Staff of Fire Atronach or Sanguine Rose) won't work if you have the Elemental Potency perk.

As a werewolf, corpses that you have already devoured can be essentially 'tapped' again with a low level raise dead spell and will grant extra werewolf experience even if you are unable to resurrect them. This effect also applies to animals if you have the werewolf perk Savage Feeding.